White House Climate Change Gravy Train Gets Moving

A Touch of Paranoia Can’t Hurt

Following the G-20 commitment to “fight climate change” (short-hand for: hike taxes and increase regulations, while exerting precisely zero influence on the climate – whereby this latter point may be the only good thing about it), the White House has come out with a tweet announcing its newest climate-related initiative. The tweet is informing us of the so-called “climate resilience toolkit” as follows:

Worth sharing: Here’s a new toolkit to help communities respond to climate change → http://toolkit.climate.gov

We need a picture to go with that, don’t we? Well, here you are. The picture provided by the WH reminds one not just of “global warming” – it looks more like “roasting in hell”:

The picture accompanying the White House tweet on the “climate resilience toolkit”.

Allow us to point out that the connection between modern-day forest fires and “climate change” is essentially zero – although admittedly, forest fires were not as frequent during the last ice age. On the other hand, if we still were in said ice age, we wouldn’t have to worry about houses burning down, as there would be no human civilization to speak of. Instead a few ten thousand people would barely subside on hunting and gathering and hide out in caves. “Noble savages” though they would possibly be, we actually prefer civilization, which in terms of the climate is a result of the warmer temperatures we enjoy today (we hereby confirm that this information is hiding out in various history books).

However, the picture they chose says a lot about the mindset informing modern climate propaganda – it is mainly a fear-based meme, not different from the campaigns of countless doomsayers of yore. For a fairly comprehensive overview of the history of professional prophets of doom see “The End is Nigh”. This is a well-worn profession people have always made money with – either provided by the gullible, or nowadays quite involuntarily by tax payers.

Follow the Money

We believe the most important page of the “climate resilience toolkit” section posted by the government is this one: Funding Opportunities.

It is an interesting page in several respects. For instance, it mixes up responses to natural disasters (a government “specialty”) with “climate change”, as if inclement weather were somehow the result of the climate cycle observed since 1976. This was when the last period of “global cooling” ended amid intense paranoia over an impending new ice age. If so, then we need more, not less climate change, because incidences of weather related catastrophes are in steep decline, as the frequency of tornadoes, hurricanes and cyclones has been hitting record lows in recent years. Extreme cold spells in the northern hemisphere seem to be a slightly bigger problem actually (the last one reportedly led to a 3% plunge in US GDP, so there is some – however tentative – evidence that extremely cold weather can have sizable negative effects).

Hidden in the funding page are also subtle digs aimed against cars. The car is certainly a product associated with individual liberty, given the fact that it greatly enhances individual mobility. Not surprisingly, the political left, which is misnamed “progressive” even though its economic assumptions are static and it actually seems to despise the progress brought about by capitalism, has always hated the car (see for example this article about why cars and guns represent “too much liberty” from a nanny state supporter). On the funding page we find “bike-share planning” among the endeavors held to be worthy of government funding.

All in all, money is apparently about to be thrown in literally every direction. The “landscape must be made climate resilient”, “wildlife must be adapted to climate change”, “developing countries must be helped to adapt to the negative effects of climate change”, and a lot of stuff that’s even more vague. The term “sustainable” is thrown around liberally (no pun intended) as well. It is quite clear that there is a huge open field for political cronies to profitably plow.

So what do the “negative effects of climate change” actually consist of? We really have not the foggiest idea. Let’s look at a few charts.

The plunging global cyclone count – that can’t be it – click to enlarge.

One of the lowest hurricane frequencies in 150 years – can’t be the problem either … – click to enlarge.

Tornado frequencies falling off the chart? Looks like a good thing to us, but what do we know? – click to enlarge.

Maybe there are islands in the Pacific that are flooded by rising sea levels? Nope, nope, and nope again. They are actually growing, and thereby reducing the extent of the seascape. Or maybe there are climate refugees fleeing the worst-hit developing nations? Well, there is at least one (see “Meet the World’s First Ever Climate Refugee” for details). The other 49,999,999 long predicted refugees have been postponed by yet another decade (we hereby predict that they will remain “postponed” until the next ice age hits).

So we are not really sure what “negative effects” of climate change need to be mitigated by throwing money at them. Does anyone have a suggestion?

It should be added to this that we are A) actually still living in one of the coldest periods of the past 10,000 years, i.e., since the end of the last major ice age – as the temperature reconstructions from ice cores show – and B) there has been zero warming in 18 years, 3 months and counting (the chart legend of satellite temperature measurements shown below says “18 years and 1 month” as it shows the situation as of the end of September).

From a longer term perspective, we have just emerged from the “little ice age”, a time of failing harvests and very uncomfortable and cold winters – click to enlarge.

The El Nino-induced temperature spike in 1998 was the high point in rising temperatures since the last short term cooling cycle ended in the late 1970s. As of this month, there has been no net warming in more than 18 years.

Conclusion:

A lot of tax payer money is destined for the pockets of the politically well-connected, helped along by fear-based propaganda. There is no evidence that any of the proposed “climate change” related funding makes sense. As for general disaster response planning and funding, the government has proved inept at the task at every opportunity, and there is little hope this will change (again, no pun intended). As far as we can tell, these occasions are mainly used by politicians to condemn the market response and accuse sellers of urgently needed but scarce goods of “price gauging”, as if prices had no function.

The government evidently has no compunction though about wasting untold sums on a problem that doesn’t exist – the gravy train is leaving the station again. This is not meant to deny that the climate is always changing, and that human activities may even have an infinitesimal amount of influence on this change, but this is nothing that cannot be handled by adaptation over time. Moreover, warmer periods go hand in hand with a flourishing of civilization and are therefore nothing to be dreaded.

Charts by:  Wattsupwiththat, unless otherwise indicated